Smart Cleaning: Win New Business with Dynamic Cleaning

Dynamic cleaning that utilises real-time data and intelligent automation can not only make your operations more efficient but allow you to win new business and assure your customers that you are using your time to get them the best possible results.  

The pandemic has not only reduced overall demand for office space, with knock on effects for FM companies, but it has also meant the expected standard has changed. Cleanliness is now seen as a safety issue – the British Cleaning Council report that even the sight of disinfection or cleaning taking place is enough to restore confidence. 

Clients are having to make tough decisions about their budgets considering the downturn and this puts pressure on cleaning companies to lower costs and demonstrate value for money.  

So, with the proverbial candle being burnt at both ends, how can you offer “more for less?” 

What is dynamic cleaning? 

Definitions of dynamic cleaning vary, but they all boil down to this: find ways to work smarter, not harder.  

Of course, this is easier said than done, but an intelligent deployment of works management software, combined with a network of Internet of Things (IoT) sensors can achieve this aim by fundamentally altering your approach to cleaning. 

What makes this approach work is the unifying effect it has on all facets of your operations. Your software can be used for operations, audits, reporting and compliance – all this resulting data can be used to better guide future operations. 

It creates a feedback loop where data drives your working patterns and your work helps to build up a detailed picture of your challenges and successes. 

What does a works management platform do? 

To be clear, this system is made up of several key components. Firstly, an app that guides your employees through their key tasks and ad hoc jobs also recording their additional efforts. Secondly, A platform that acts as a central command hub, from which workflows, audits, sensor feeds gather, and reports can be created. A database then stores all this data, both active responses and passive information such as the time it took to complete a job or a follow-up action created because of an issue. 

An IoT sensor network is a final element that will further inform your teams in real time.  

Everything is a test 

Let’s look at a common use case to give you an idea of how you can use data to optimise your processes. How often do you check the toilets on a given site? Once an hour? Twice a day? 

You may end up cleaning more than necessary or, worse still, less than necessary. To give an example, you could clean the third-floor toilets once at 10am and once at 3pm. This makes sense, as it considers the morning rush as well as lunch time, but if this bathroom is in fact used heavily after 3pm (by people going home at 5pm), your users might find it dirty when they come back the next morning.  

The fact is that even the most carefully planned schedule will not be able to cover all bases, especially without real data backing it up. 

But with IoT door sensors, you can monitor approximate bathroom use, assuming one door open is equal to one use.  

You might start by setting an arbitrary threshold of 30 uses, before an alert is sent to a member of your team via the app to visit the bathroom for a spot clean. Once the weekly audit for that area has been completed, you can use your score as a benchmark. If you score 10/10, the system can automatically update the uses rule, to increase the threshold to 35 uses before the next spot clean is sent. 

By changing the number incrementally, you can discover the most efficient rule, balancing your audit scores against keeping the number of necessary cleans as efficient as possible. 

Seeing is believing 

Improving efficiency is of course always desirable, but it’s the detailed reporting capabilities of a smart platform that make it such a compelling solution. These will first empower you to make operational change, but over time it will provide valuable business information that you can leverage to make a case for your business. 

With the help of your software provider, you can quickly and easily start to create customer facing dashboards that display relevant data in real time or as a snapshot of operations.  

You can show them the increasing effectiveness of your teams as they become more agile and reactive. You can demonstrate that you’ve met your SLAs, reduced response times and improved routines based on real data. (All of which is possible with dynamic cleaning). 

Your customers will not only appreciate the transparency this provides, they will also be assured that you are providing the best possible service and maintaining exacting standards of safety through rigorous cleaning.  

These dashboards are also highly effective for winning new business, demonstrating to potential customers that you are at the forefront of FM operations and that your service is truly outstanding and cost-effective. 

Confidence boost 

The British Cleaning Council have produced surveys showing that cleanliness is a key factor for workers considering whether to return to the office. Cleaner sites should result in higher usage restoring consumer confidence and in turn help to grow the businesses that you provide services to.  

There are many aspects to dynamic cleaning, but in order to create reactive, efficient teams that can also deliver a higher quality of service, you will need to leverage a digital platform that can help to automate and deliver real time feedback to teams and gather the information you need to really understand your operations.